CHENNAI, India: More than 100,000 people were evacuated from their homes Wednesday as a tropical storm hit southern India from the Bay of Bengal, officials said.
Rain lashed the region and strong winds uprooted trees in some places. Weather officials said the storm packed winds of up to 100 kilometers (60 miles) per hour as it made landfall near Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu state.
A storm surge of up to 1.5 meters (5 feet) was expected to flood low-lying areas of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh states, the India Meteorological Department said.
It said it expected heavy to very heavy rainfall over parts of the states during the next 24 hours. Fishermen were asked to stay at shore until Thursday.
State authorities turned 282 schools into relief centers in Chennai. The city’s port halted cargo operations, but berthing of ships was continuing, the Press Trust of India news agency said. Twenty-three ships were moved to safer areas.
About 150,000 people were moved to shelters in Nellore district in Andhra Pradesh state, district official B. Sridhar said.
In Sri Lanka, authorities said two people were killed and thousands displaced due to heavy rain and strong winds from the storm.
Sri Lanka’s Disaster Management Center said 4,627 people across the island nation had been displaced because of flooding, while 56 were evacuated in the central region due to threats of landslides. One woman died Tuesday after a tree branch fell on her, while another person was killed in flooding, the agency said. Floods have also damaged about 1,000 houses, it said.
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Associated Press writer Bharatha Mallawarachi in Colombo, Sri Lanka, contributed to this report.
Tens of thousands flee as storm hits south India
Tens of thousands flee as storm hits south India
California joins UN health network following US departure from WHO
- California Governor Gavin Newsom decried the United States’ move on Friday, calling it a “reckless decision” that will hurt many people
CALIFORNIA: California said on Friday it will become the first US state to join the World Health Organization’s global outbreak response network following the Trump administration’s decision to pull Washington out of the WHO.
The network, comprised of more than 360 technical institutions, responds to public health events with the deployment of staff and resources to affected countries. It has tackled major public health events, including COVID-19. The state’s decision to join the network comes more than a year after US President Donald Trump gave notice that Washington would depart from the WHO. On Thursday, it officially withdrew from the agency, saying its decision reflected failures in the UN health agency’s management of the pandemic.
California Governor Gavin Newsom decried the United States’ move on Friday, calling it a “reckless decision” that will hurt many people.
“California will not bear witness to the chaos this decision will bring,” Newsom said in a statement. “We will continue to foster partnerships across the globe and remain at the forefront of public health preparedness, including through our membership as the only state in WHO’s Global Outbreak Alert & Response Network.”
The governor’s office said he met with the WHO’s Director General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week, where they discussed collaborating to detect and respond to emerging public health threats.
The WHO did not immediately respond when reached for comment.
